Not Above Your Gods, Six case studies of editing and publishing history from postwar Australia

Abstract

For the most part, editorial labour goes unseen and unremarked by literary studies scholars. When it is the subject of discussion in Australia, it is often decried or part of a racist assumption that First Nations writers would be incapable of producing work themselves. This thesis takes six case studies from the second half of the twentieth century in Australia: Ruth Park, Thea Astley, Jessica Anderson, Sally Morgan, Ruby Langford Ginibi and Kate Jennings. Unlike most existing work on editing that centres male writers and individual genius, this thesis focuses on women authors and editors and argues that studying editing unveils the editor process - a wide spectrum of interventions that contribute to the version of the text with which readers engage. This thesis also argues that, despite existing orthodoxies about the dangers of highlighting editorial labour, studying editing instead highlights authors' agency in new and critical ways. Drawing on genetic criticism, textual studies, book history and editing studies, this thesis offers new ways of reading the relationships between authors and the network of contributors to the production of their texts. This project has also been informed by my own experience as a professional editor for the past fifteen years. Through detailed analysis of archival materials, extensive engagement with existing scholarship as well as close readings, I outline alternative approaches for literary and publishing studies scholars alike.